Tomorrow Already Has Somebody In It

The bag was by the door. The bag had been by the door since half past five, because it had been packed, checked, unpacked and repacked three times, and the last two of those were not really about the bag.

At ten past eight her father came up and found her lying flat on her back with her arms straight down by her sides, staring at the ceiling like somebody waiting for a train they do not want to catch.

There is a test tomorrow, she said. And then, in the flat voice of somebody reporting a settled fact, she said the rest of it. I am going to get them all wrong.

He nearly said the thing everybody says. You will be fine. You will do brilliantly. You always worry and it is always fine.

He stopped himself, and he was right to. Because if she is not fine tomorrow, if it goes badly, if she comes out at three o'clock with a red face and eight wrong out of twenty, then she will remember exactly what her father told her the night before, and she will file it under things grown ups say that are not true. That is expensive, and it costs more than one test.

So he sat down instead and said nothing much for a minute.

Now, if you are the one sitting on that bed at ten past eight, this next part is for you.

You cannot promise her tomorrow. You should not, and underneath the wanting to, you already know it. But there is something you can say that is completely true, that costs nothing if the day goes badly, and that is a great deal bigger than a spelling test.

It is not about how tomorrow goes. It is about who is in it.

Do not promise the day

Take the temptation seriously, because it comes from love. Every parent wants to hand a frightened child a good result, and the only thing actually to hand is a sentence, so the sentence gets stretched to cover the outcome.

Do not stretch it. A promise about tomorrow puts your credibility on the line of something neither of you controls, and children keep accounts. What she needs is not a forecast. It is a fact she can carry into a room where no parent is allowed to follow.

And notice what she has actually done tonight, because it is very common and it is not laziness. She has decided in advance that it will go badly, because a disaster you have already agreed to is slightly less frightening than one that might arrive. That is a small person managing dread with the only tool she has.

And you are not required to talk her out of that tonight. Scripture never asks anybody to feel confident before God goes with them, and it is the Holy Spirit who steadies a child at ten past eight, not a successful argument about her chances.

Nor does she need a pep talk about being brave. Courage is another job handed to somebody who is already tired, and courage is not what is being offered here. What is being offered is release: she can put the whole of tomorrow down, tonight, and not carry it through her sleep.

He gets there first

My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.Exodus 33:14

That was said to a man with an enormous day in front of him and no confidence at all about it, and look at what he was actually given. Not a guaranteed outcome. Not a promise that the journey would be easy. Presence, and then rest, in that order and joined together.

And you have a God who is in tomorrow before either of you gets there. Exodus 33 puts His presence out in front of the day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true in a classroom you will never see, whatever the paper comes back saying.

This is the note for tonight, and it is the whole note. Your daughter is not the advance party. She is not walking into tomorrow to see whether God has managed to arrive. He is already in the room, already at the desk, already at nine fifteen when the papers go out, and He got there long before the bag went by the door.

And you were never sent ahead into your own tomorrow either. His word says He goes before His people and stays with them, and the Holy Spirit is already standing in the parts of this week you have been quietly dreading.

Then say the second half of it, and say it exactly as carefully. God is with her if it goes well tomorrow. God is with her if it goes badly. His being there is not a prediction about the score, and His staying is not a reward for a good one. Tie His care to the result and you have handed her a God who leaves when marks are low, and she will believe you, and that will cost her far more than eight out of twenty ever could.